Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru
- Alternative title
- The Bad Sleep Well
- Synopsis
- Kurosawa directed three adaptations from Shakespeare. Two were recreated as samurai movies: Macbeth became THRONE OF BLOOD (1957), and King Lear inspired his last major film, the epic RAN (1985). THE BAD SLEEP WELL (1960) comes between the two and is the least-known. Kurosawa’s Hamlet is ‘a scathing excoriation of post-war Japanese corruption and a masterly demonstration of noir’ (The Guardian, 2019).
Tony Howard in his essay ‘Shakespeare’s Cinematic Offshoots’ in Russell Jackson ‘Shakespeare on Film’ (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), p301 believes the baroque comic details bring the film closer to The Revenger’s Tragedy. - Language
- Japanese
- Country
- Japan
- Medium
- Film
- Technical information
- Black-and-white / Sound
- Year of release
- 1960
- Duration
- 151 mins
Credits
- Director
- Akira Kurosawa
- Producer
- Akira Kurosawa; Tomoyuki Tanaka
- Cinematographer
- Ryuzo Kikushima; Yuzuru Aizawa
- Screenplay
- Akira Kurosawa; Eijiro Hisaita; Hideo Oguni; Shinobu Hashimoto
- Music
- Masaru Sato
- Production Design
- Yoshiro Muraki
- Cast
Additional Details
- Production type
- Fiction Films
- Plays
- Hamlet
- Subjects
- Drama
- Keywords
- film adaptations; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616); Shakespeare on film; Film noir; corruption
Production Company
- Name
Kurosaw-Toho
Distributor
- Name
BFI Distribution
- bookings.films@bfi.org.uk
- Web
- http://www.bfi.org.uk/distribution External site opens in new window
- Phone
- 020 7957 8938/8935
- Address
- 21 Stephen Street
London
W1P 2LN - Notes
- The British Film Institute is a specialist non-theatric rental distributor of international fiction and documentary films on 16mm and 35mm film, as well as VHS and DVD video. The holdings are so vast that only those titles available on DVD and HD Digital are listed in full on the website, so it is worth enquiring about specific titles that might only be available for hire in other formats. The BFI has partnered with on-line platforms such as lovefilm and blinkbox to deliver a selection of films to buy or rent in digital format, and others are streamed free of charge on the BFI’s YouTube channel or as dowloadable clips on the Creative Archive section of the BFI’s own website.
Distributor (Sale)
- Name
Retail outlets
How to cite this record
Shakespeare, "Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/shakespeare/search/index.php/title/av37087 (Accessed 26 Nov 2024)